Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Very few people have had much to say about the photos of a nude Melania
Trump that appeared on the cover of the New York Post. Among those who have, Judith Miller and Ann Marlowe have seized the more salient point: namely that we seem to have
lost our sense of shame. I posted on their column on Monday.

Perhaps it was in response, but, whatever provoked it, Adam Gopnik has offered a disappointing meditation on the silence that greeted pictures of the naked Mrs. Trump. Writing on the New Yorker site, Gopnik
suggested that the non-reaction, the great shrug, showed a new American
maturity. We are comfortable seeing naked pictures of politician’s wives. Of course, it might also mean that we know better than to express our discomfort.

One feels obliged to recall that when an Australian artist
painted a mural of Hillary Clinton in a sexy get-up, authorities insisted that
he take it down. In response he covered Hillary up with a painted-over burqa.

As for Gopnik, he first suggested that Trump himself
leaked the photos to the Post in order to distract from other embarrassing
campaign events.

In his words:

Since
Murdoch’s Post is the
only paper in New York to be resolutely pro-Trump, there seems to be a decent
chance that the pictures were published with Trump’s acquiescence, if not his
aid. This may seem odd, but in truth Trump has a long history of actively
feeding information to the press that more normally constituted citizens might
find embarrassing. And it did serve as a distraction from all the other, still
more embarrassing things that were going on around the candidate.

This represents one or two speculations too many.

Since, as Gopnik’s notes, the Post has always been a
money-losing proposition, why would it not run the photos in order to juice up
the circulation?

If Trump leaked them, he would surely have had to explain it
to his wife, who might not have been very happy about it. To say nothing of his
children.

Surely, other people possess copies of the photos. Would
they not have an interest in selling them to the tabloids? Since the owner of
the National Enquirer is a friend of Trump, one might guess that it would not
have wanted to publish the photos. And besides, the Post and other Murdoch
papers, like the Wall Street Journal, have not been full-throated Trump
supporters.

On this point, Gopnik’s argument does not withstand
scrutiny.

And yet, Gopnik’s surmise makes for a better narrative. It
need not report the truth in a fair and balanced way. Gopnik has sacrificed the
truth for dramatic tension

After suggesting that Trump leaked the pictures himself,
Gopnik imagines that Trump was disappointed to discover that no one cared. There is truth to this assertion. If the world espies a photo
of your wife naked and does not care… it is not good news.

If Trump has no shame, as seems clearly to be the case, and
if Melania behaved in the past as if she had precious little, the public’s
failure to react might very well mean, that we have, as Gopnik suggests, overcome our sense of shame.

And yet, we should hesitate before embracing this
politically correct interpretation. It might also mean that the public was
doing what you would normally do when you come across someone whose modesty has
been exposed: you cover her up. Or better, you turn away and cover your eyes.

Gopnik might have offered that reading, but he has opted for
political correctness:

What
was so strange and oddly cheering was that, on the whole, nobody took the bait.
Did Trump expect his wife to be subjected to a storm of mockery, so that he
could spring to her defense? Apart from some scattershot sneering, it didn’t
happen. Was he expecting his political rivals to publicly question him so that
he could defend her, while simultaneously pointing out how much hotter she was
than every other candidate’s wife? Didn’t happen. Did the Post and Trump both expect
hooting from feminist Hillary supporters, or even from one Clinton or the
other, thus revealing their hypocritical readiness to turn on a woman with the
wrong politics? That didn’t happen, either. Nothing happened. The photographs
were received almost entirely without scandal, because, well, because
education does happen,
and change does take place, and even the most benighted among us, Trump quite
possibly aside, now understand that a woman’s body is hers to pose and have
photographed more or less as she chooses, and that it is for the rest of us to
respect her choices and to look or not at the photographs as we choose. The
wrongness of “slut shaming” women, as we call it now, for appearing in
pictures, either artful or erotic, is apparent to all.

What Gopnik calls America’s maturity might be America’s
numbness to shame, but it also might mean that some Americans still have a
sense of shame that is far more developed than Gopnik’s.

Gopnik argued that a woman’s body is hers to do with as she
pleases. Which is evidently nonsense. No woman is an island, entirely
detached from other human beings. She might do as she pleases, but she has a
family, friends and neighbors and should consider the effect her actions will have on them. Isn't this the most elementary form of moral sense.

In truth: do as you please because it effects no one else
but you is about as bad a moral
principle as anyone could have concocted.

Gopnik believes that if a woman has no sense of shame we
have no right to judge her. Here we run into a small problem. Gopnik is saying
that we, as outsiders, have no right to form our own opinions of the woman. And
what made him the reigning authority on what you and I think?

Acting as a culture warrior, Gopnik is arguing that cultural
brainwashing has changed the American mind and that we no longer have
the right to have a disparaging opinion. We are forced to accept whatever other people do. This is obviously an instance of mind control. Culture
warriors want to allow people to behave as they will and not be judged for it. If your opinion is not politically correct you will be taxed,
by Gopnik, with immaturity… or worse.

Gopnik has ignored the fact that most people have an inborn
moral sense. When they act badly they know that they have acted badly and feel
ashamed of it. And they know this even if no one else has noticed.

If America, by Gopnik’s lights, has overcome shame, should
all women do as Melania Trump did? Would he recommend that the women in his
family send out text messages of their nakedness… because in a new America no one
will judge them.

We are, Gopnik suggests, more comfortable with naked bodies.
That might be a sign of maturity but it might also be a sign of decadence. If
Donald Trump, in his off-hand pronouncements, seems to have overcome his sense
of shame-- what others are calling his filter, the one that stops you from
saying everything that crosses your mind—does Gopnik agree that no one should
judge him ill for as much. Is Gopnik going to vote for Trump?

One suspects that Gopnik feels a need to show that he is not
shocked by naked female bodies. Because being shocked would make him seem
uncool. And yet, the truth of the matter is that women do take offense at such
displays and think less of those women who do not know how to keep their pants
on. Witness Judith Miller and Ann Marlowe. Does Gopnik believe that women who
find such behavior offensive ought to shut up? Does Gopnik’s need to show how
cool he is trump the considerations that women might have?

When it comes to shame, you cannot pick and choose. If you
want people to overcome their sense of shame and to stop judging others for
behaving indecorously, you will have to accept that bad manners are the norm,
and that impropriety and immodesty can and should be practiced by everyone. You
will also have to cease judging anyone by the content of his character.

Shame is a universal emotion. All human beings at all times
and in all places have had an innate sense of shame. They have always covered
up their external genitalia. The gesture defies them as social beings. Better
to be a social being than an amoral lout. From this it follows that people who
keep their private parts private are more trustworthy. They are less interested
in their own aggrandizement and more cognizant of the effect their behavior
will have on others.

Besides, as Confucius said, and as I have often quoted, when
people lack a sense of shame they will, if they want to have an orderly
society, try to control behavior with prohibitions, taboos, and regulations. They will fall
back on guilt and threats of punishment. This produces a guilt culture where deviations
from the politically correct norm-- thinking the wrong thought or using the
wrong pronoun-- become criminal behavior. Perhaps we are there now.

7 comments:

Perhaps we're all yawning because no one has actually seen the pictures. How "nude" is she anyway? Is she simply topless? And modern bikini's show almost everything anyway. Are pubic hairs or that area shaved visible in these photos, and do American newspapers print photos like that? Perhaps the post is that sort of newspaper.

Stuart: Shame is a universal emotion. All human beings at all times and in all places have had an innate sense of shame. They have always covered up their external genitalia.

Is this the photo we're talking about? If so, she seems pretty well covered up, no genitalia exposed.http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/donald-trump-melania-trump-knauss-first-lady-erections

Technical details ought to matter you're moralizing. Otherwise people yawn and wonder what the fuss is about. So first we have to decide what we've seen, and second we can speculate what is proper to see, as protective males of course.

"Acting as a culture warrior, Gopnik is arguing that cultural brainwashing has changed the American mind and that we no longer have the right to have a disparaging opinion. We are forced to accept whatever other people do. This is obviously an instance of mind control. Culture warriors want to allow people to behave as they will and not be judged for it. If your opinion is not politically correct you will be taxed, by Gopnik, with immaturity… or worse." Except for one YUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE exception: culture warriors tolerate no dissent or diverse opinions.